When the coaches of District 4-4A get together after the season to vote on the all-district team, they may have to create a new category.

The toughness award.

Most certainly, a frontrunner for that honor would be Lubbock High senior quarterback Cory Schovanec, who has played the last three weeks still feeling the effects of a separated shoulder suffered during the non-conference schedule.

But with backup James Garcia (knee) out for the season and Jordan High, called up from the junior varsity, having to have surgery to remove a mass from his throat the day of the Plainview game, Schovanec was pressed into duty. He hadn’t thrown a pass in weeks, and even when he tried it barely went 5 yards.

LHS lost to the Bulldogs, and though Schovanec improved some the following week, the Westerners fell to Hereford to put their chances of making the postseason for the second straight year in jeopardy. Backed up to the wall, however, LHS came out with its best game of the season Friday at San Angelo Lake View, and Schovanec led the way.

“I’ve been working hard rehabbing my shoulder trying to get it stronger,” Schovanec said. “The trainers have done a good job of helping me through it. It was a challenge but they helped a lot and I’m back strong now. It’s good now.”

Is it ever. Schovanec put the Westerners on his injured shoulder and guided the way to a 42-35 victory over the Chiefs by completing 26 of 38 passes for 368 yards and three touchdowns, and he also ran for three scores, including the game-winner on a 31-yard quarterback draw with 18 seconds left.

That effort, plus his willingness to endure the pain, makes him this week’s Happy State Bank-Avalanche-Journal Male Athlete of the Week.

“You could see it on Monday in practice that he was feeling good and getting into a groove,” Lubbock High coach Jason Strunk said. “His shoulder is still going to bother him but I think he’s about as healthy as he’s going to get. He’s getting more comfortable and able to throw the ball. He was threading the needle the other night and dropping it in over their heads.

He was on. It was one hell of a performance.”

It was a performance that came at the most crucial time for the Westerners (2-6, 1-2 in 4-4A). A loss to the Chiefs would have knocked them out of playoff contention, but now, even with games coming up against Frenship on Thursday and Monterey to end the season, the playoff light is still on for LHS.

On the season he has thrown for 985 yards and 11 touchdowns. But more importantly, he has brought a hint of confidence back to the team, as evidenced by the game-winning drive in which he led the Westerners 70 yards in four plays, starting the drive after Lake View had tied the game with 51 seconds remaining.

Bad shoulder and all, he covered the final 31 yards of the drive and scored the game-winning touchdown on a designed quarterback draw.

“Normally, old Lubbock High teams would have hung their heads and that would have been it, go to overtime and lose,” Strunk said. “It was like (Schovanec) had this air of confidence and said ‘we got this, we’ll get this done.’ The team believed that night and they believed in Cory.”

Schovanec believes, too — in good things happening from here on out.

“It’s tough but now we’ve got it going,” Schovanec said. “We need to string a couple of wins together to get into the playoffs and we’re determined to do so.”